1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a staple attribute setting method.
2. Description of the Related Art
An information processing apparatus, such as a personal computer, enables users to instruct a printing apparatus (a printer or a copying machine) to print an edited document to obtain a plurality of individually stapled copies. A document processing system enables users to determine whether to staple the entire document of a print job and designate a range of the document to be stapled.
The above-described system enables users to divide a document into a plurality of portions (each referred to as a chapter) and set a partial staple instruction (i.e., a partial staple instruction attribute) that instructs whether to staple or not for each chapter. Further, the above-described system can be combined with a print processing apparatus that can generate print data according to the set partial staple instruction and can perform staple processing based on the print data, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-9138.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-9138, there is a conventional method for partial staple ON setting or a conventional method for setting a partial staple for the print processing apparatus. As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-194667, there is a conventional method for improving visibility when the above-described setting of data having a hierarchical structure.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-192248, when a document processing system handles a document including a plurality of chapters that are arranged in a hierarchical structure, the document processing system can generate a new chapter by dividing one of the plurality of chapters and can set an attribute for the newly generated chapter to be identical to that of the original chapter having been divided. In this case, operability can be improved.
According to the above-described system, it may be necessary to divide a chapter to change any one of various settings including the staple. For example, to change a print mode from one-sided printing to two-sided printing, the system generates a one-sided printing chapter and a two-sided printing chapter and then sets a one-sided printing attribute and a two-sided printing attribute for the generated chapters, respectively.
Therefore, although it is desired to staple all the chapters as a group, the one-sided printing chapter and the two-sided printing chapter cannot be assembled together. Thus, the system staples a one-sided printing portion and a two-sided printing portion individually. Moreover, things that the system can perform when a new chapter is generated are limited to simply copying an attribute of the original chapter and setting a default value.